Shoddy Science: Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood takes great pains to describe itself in the rosiest way possible:

We are a trusted health care provider, an informed educator, a passionate advocate, and a global partner helping similar organizations around the world. …

For nearly 100 years, Planned Parenthood has promoted a **commonsense approach to women’s health and well-being, based on respect for each individual’s right to make informed, independent decisions about health, sex, and family planning.

But is America’s abortion giant (who performed a record 333,964 abortions in 2012 while receiving “45 percent of its revenues from taxpayer-funded government sources”) actually an “informed” educator? Is the organization’s approach really “commonsense”? Is it truly “based on respect” and the ability to make “informed” decisions?

In the video below, Planned Parenthood’s college outreach group, “Advocates for Choice” advocates for completely false and shoddy science. They tell the college students:

Ignore scientific evidence; it doesn’t matter; don’t think about it.

“There’s people on our side and research that says that the heart doesn’t beat ’til 24 weeks.”

The fact is that science is on the side of the pro-life movement – ultrasound, in-utero photography, and graphic images of aborted children all prove the humanity of the unborn child beyond any shadow of a doubt. And so abortion supporters are scared – so scared, in fact, that they have been forced to reject one of their own dogmas – the absolute truthfulness of science.

Planned Parenthood hardly acts “informed,” and it hardly attempts to help women make “informed” decisions.

There is scientific consensus that each new, unique human being begins her life at the moment of fertilization. Yet Planned Parenthood continues to reject modern science, asserting instead that when life begins isn’t “really relevant” to abortion.

It is a fact that the fetal heartbeat begins at 22 days (even National Geographic, who produces video for the Endowment for Human Development, agrees). The heartbeat can be seen on a normal, non-3D ultrasound screen at five or six weeks. And below, a video captures a baby’s heartbeat at 4 1/2 weeks. Yet, Planned Parenthood counselors tell women lies: “Heart tones are at seven weeks. Heartbeat is when the fetus is active in the uterus – can survive – which is about 17 or 18 weeks.”

A Planned Parenthood abortionist was caught on tape telling a 10-week pregnant woman, “It’s not a baby at this stage or anything like that.” A Planned Parenthood counselor told a woman who was six to eight weeks pregnant: “There’s not a baby at this point. You wouldn’t be able to identify any parts of the fetus whatsoever. … [A]t this point there’s nothing developed at all. There’s no legs, no arms, no brain, no heart.” Yet, when a baby is between only 6 and 7 weeks old, her brain waves can be measured and her hands begin to move. When she is 9 weeks old, she sucks her thumb, “sighs, stretches, moves the head, opens the mouth, and moves the tongue.” (Check the top of this article for a photo of a baby at the age of 7 1/2 weeks.)

America has no need for a “health care provider” who ignores the facts, pushes aside science, and blatantly lies to its patients – while insisting that every one of its affiliates mustperform abortions. Planned Parenthood’s science is worse than shoddy, and this is just one reason why America doesn’t need Planned Parenthood.

**While Planned Parenthood claims to provide women with a “commonsense” approach, it regularly opposes laws that would protect women in a commonsense way. (Go to this report, to pages 29-30, for more information.)

Editor’s Note: To catch up on our “Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood” series, check out our first two articles here and here. Come back each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next few weeks to find additional information on why Planned Parenthood is bad for American women, children, and families.